A number of pressing problems confront the healthcare industry. As of December 2009 there were 105,305 patients registered by United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) as needing an organ transplant. Between January and September 2009, only 21,423 transplants were performed. Each year more patients are added to the UNOS list than transplants are performed, resulting in a net increase in the number of patients waiting for a transplant. For example, at the beginning of 2008, 75,834 people were registered as needing a kidney; at the end of that year, the number had grown to 80,972. 16,546 kidney transplants were performed that year, but 33,005 new patients were added to the list. The 2008 transplant rate for a patient registered by UNOS as needing a kidney was 20%. The mortality rate of waitlist patients was 7%.
Additionally, the research and development cost of a new pharmaceutical compound is approximately $1.8 billion. See Paul, et al. (2010). How to improve R&D productivity: the pharmaceutical industry's grand challenge. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 9(3):203-214. Drug discovery is the process by which drugs are discovered and/or designed. The process of drug discovery generally involves at least the steps of: identification of candidates, synthesis, characterization, screening, and assays for therapeutic efficacy. Despite advances in technology and understanding of biological systems, drug discovery is still a lengthy, expensive, and inefficient process with low rate of new therapeutic discovery.